Kitchen Press is a new, independent publisher specialising in food writing. It aims, through lovingly crafted bespoke cookbooks, to connect innovative chefs, expert food writers and independent restauranteurs with customers and others around the world who love food.
We believe that the whole experience of reading about food and cooking should be as pleasurable and inspiring as eating it, and we want to help promote the people and places doing that best.
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Eating for Mental Wellbeing in Lockdown
Introducing Sonnda Catto!
Sonnda Catto, over at Eating for Wellbeing & Joy, has created this fab free eBook, Eating for Mental Wellbeing in Lockdown. Nutritionist, researcher and ex-Michelin starred chef, she sets out 3 simple food steps we can all follow to stay positive and boost our mental wellbeing in this unsettling time. Fun, easy ways to take back control and feel better right now.
Crammed with top tips for seasonal eating, loads of delicious healthy recipes and a playful, slightly tongue in cheek, mindfulness-of-rhubarb meditation (not to be missed by Yorkshire triangle rhubarb fans!!), it’s a fantastic resource to have in your self-care toolkit. All packaged up with a welcome dose of light relief.
We can’t recommend it highly enough. To download your copy, simply follow this link: http://www.sonndacatto.co.uk/free-ebook.
More from Sonnda below.
Background to the eBook
This booklet came about on the back of a request from university colleagues for healthy eating tips in lockdown. People were panic buying and worrying about food shortages, but it seemed to me that the single greatest risk posed to health by lockdown/social distancing measures is to our mental health and wellbeing – I explain why below.
My colleagues loved the ideas I shared. So much so that I decided to publish the booklet as a free eBook, available for download from my website. People have really responded to its positive, empowering outlook, light tone, and the concept of seasonal eating as a way to be mindful. What’s really resonated though, I think, is the sense of control it gives back to people. At a time when so much is out with our control.
Why the focus on mental wellbeing?
As former research lead for reporting on Scotland’s mental health and wellbeing at Public Health Scotland), I’m well versed in the determinants of mental health and wellbeing. And was struck by how many stood to be negatively impacted by lockdown/social distancing. Across all four domains: individual-level factors (such as education, health behaviours, and physical health), plus features of our social, economic and physical environments.
🔸Our ability to be physically active
🔸The food we eat
🔸Alcohol intake
🔸Community participation
🔸Social contact, support + inclusion
🔸Trust
🔸Neighbourhood trust, safety + crime
🔸Having a sense of control over our lives
🔸Having work, work-related stress, demand, control, support + work-life balance
🔸Our finances
🔸Home overcrowding
🔸Access to green spaces and a personal ‘escape facility’.
But please take heart, because I believe there’s much you can do to stay positive and nurture your mental health and wellbeing in this unsettling time.
My advice
In the booklet, I set out three 3 simple food steps you can follow to boost your mental wellbeing. Fun, easy ways to take back control and make yourself feel better right now. They are:
Eating for wellbeing and joy
To help you add a few seasonal foods to your diet, I’ve shared my top tips for seasonal eating at this time of year. So you know what to do with each seasonal ingredient for maximum health benefit and pleasure – for wellbeing and joy, my nutritionist/chef trademark – each one is supported by one or more of my own recipes. Nothing complicated; just simple, seasonal eats. The kind of food where effort and time is totally disproportional to enjoyment (little and lots, respectively!).
Recipes include a sugar-free rhubarb compote, scented with vanilla and sweetened with just enough honey to take it from mouth-puckeringly sour to refreshingly tart. Totally dreamy dolloped over luscious, full fat Greek yoghurt, and scattered with a handful of shatteringly crisp toasted flaked almonds. Cavolo nero (aka black kale) wilted down and tossed through pasta with a few slugs of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) and freshly grated parmesan or wonderfully salty, crystalline aged Gouda – a regular parmesan sub in my kitchen.
I’ve included a couple of ways to eat Romanesco, the delicate, nutty-tasting, green cauli with florets shaped in jaw-droppingly beautiful prisms. Including the prettiest pastel green, soft as a cloud, Romanesco cream. Excellent as a side veg, slathered on toast, as a dip. Or, my personal fave, mound into a bowl, make a small indentation on top, fill with EVOO and rest a soft-boiled egg inside the puddle. Ultimate springtime comfort food!
If that sounds like your kind of thing, then download your FREE COPY now: http://www.sonndacatto.co.uk/free-ebook.
Take good care, stay positive, and please feel free to share the link with those you think could benefit – we’ll get through this by looking out for each other. 🤗
The Seafood Shack Wins The Jane Grigson Trust Award 2020
Huge congratulations to Kirsty Scobie and Fenella Renwick who have scooped the Jane Grigson Trust Award for their first book, The Seafood Shack (pub Nov 2020).Now in its fifth year, the £2000 Jane Grigson Trust Award, created in memory of the distinguished British food writer Jane Grigson, is made to a first-time writer of a book about food or drink which has been commissioned but not yet published. In the spirit of Jane Grigson and her writing, the Award is for a non-fiction book on food and drink in the widest sense, from any genre – cookbook, memoir, travel, history – as long as the primary subject is food or drink.
About The Seafood Shack
Kirsty and Fenella set up The Seafood Shack in Ullapool on the north west coast of Scotland in 2016, out of frustration at the serious lack of seafood available to eat in their home town despite being its packed with fishermen and fishing boats. The Seafood Shack has built up a strong fanbase and their debut book mixes Kirsty and Fenella’s most popular recipes with a look at the Scottish seafood and fishing industry and a reflection on the lives of the fishermen at its heart.
Chair of judges of the Jane Grigson Trust Award, Geraldene Holt, comments;
“At the Jane Grigson Trust we believe that food writing can help in times of crisis by providing escapism, solace and perhaps most importantly at the moment, recipe ideas. So we are pleased to be celebrating this genre tonight and welcome these new voices into the community.
‘We are delighted to name Kirsty Scobie and Fenella Renwick as the winners of the Jane Grigson Trust Award for 2020. Drawing on their own experiences of cooking in a shack in the Scottish coastal town of Ullapool, this inspiring book is packed with plenty of simple yet delicious recipes for fish and shellfish that are already wildly popular with their customers. But Kirsty and Fenella also record their own stories about fishing – its past, present and possibly uncertain future. They not only give readers important insights into what we eat, but also help us to value properly this beautiful wild food from the rich seas that encircle the British isles.”
Kirsty and Fenella say;
“We are both absolutely overwhelmed to have won the Jane Grigson Award today, especially being up against three inspirational women, Amy, Emily and Miranda. To have even been shortlisted with these ladies is a privilege. We couldn’t have done it without the community of Ullapool and our fab customers. Without you all, there would be no Seafood Shack! Thank you so much.”
Pre-order The Seafood Shack here
Ghillie Basan: a chat and a dram with the Queen of Spice
We sent out our intrepid intern Nicola Torch to find out a little more about Ghillie Basan and the background to her new book, Spirit & Spice.
Photo © Christina Riley
photo © Christina Riley